On the topic of laws and jails; and ways to get away with crimes.

I recently came to an idea wile browsing the forums but a couple minutes ago. It seems that the "logical solution" in everyone's eyes for breaking any law is death. Say I'm starving, or I'm just a thief,and i steal a bag of grain.Maybe I can talk my way out of it with the ye olde "Have to feed my family" cliche, or perhaps I'm not the silver tonged devil that I thought myself to be, and I end up in prison. Prison, not execution on sight for breaking the law, but prison. Of course breaking some laws would be punishable by death; but let's say me and a guild have bad blood between us; so I slaughter there horses and put the heads at there feet while they're sleeping. Sure, I could get away with it if no one saw me, but if a guard caught me, I'd be thrown in a cell for a day real time (NOT playing time.) to be punished for what I've done; and perhaps escape because I have super thief skills like lockpicking and whatnot. Maybe I'd be clever (as I sometimes am) and outsource my killings to an assassin; who is willing to take the fall for me but demands gold and bail if caught. Sure, why not. My point here is not every law that can be broken has to be punished by death, and crimes can be easily committed again and again with a quick corpserun and no actual punishment (If you're clever.). Chime in your ideas below, all thoughts with or against this idea are apreciated.

 

In UO, simple criminal status, like stealing, was removed upon death. If you didn't die, it timed out after only 5 minutes, so death wasn't a requirement.

For a murderer (5 unprovoked deaths), the status didn't go away until your 'count' dropped below 5, and each death took something like 8 hours of in game time to evaporate, so it didn't matter how many times you died, you were still flagged as a PK, as was only proper.

 

I wasn't around when UO was, but that seems like a good way of dealing with major crimes. But lesser crimes like stealing or say punching someone, a corpserun is a little overkill moralwise, and a little underkill gamewise.

 

If SotA combat allows for several stages of defeat (prone, unconscious, critical injury, coup de grace) then more innovative mechanics could be used. In particular, if there are greater and greater consequences for advancing through each stage, for the attacker.

But if it's just the tired old "reach 0 hp = dead" then there's less place for innovation.

 

Breaking the law to me should mean a change of color to your character.
In UO you started out with a blue color.
Thieves went gray and murderer's went red.
Red or gray colors were open for attack.

I think after like 10 or more murders the player should go perma red.
Thieves on the other hand I'm good with them going blue again.
Besides stealing from players in UO thieves got many rare items by stealing out of shops or from NPC's, only by being a thief could you get these items.
Well you could buy from another player once he got them.

So yea that made being a thief kinda fun, stealing things in town would make you gray and then you would get other players trying to kill you once they saw you go gray.

But with that all you lost is the item you stole since most thieves went around naked.

 

I don't believe in Perma Red. Many PKs I know came to regret their crimes, and once they had repaid their debt to society (their murder counts dropped below 5), they reformed and joined the Anti-PK forces to hunt and destroy their former comrades.

In a game based on Virtues, you have to leave room for Redemption.

 

I don' think anyone should be flagged in any color based on their actions. I would be for a way for a player to flag players they have met, but not for actions not seen by the player. Otherwise, you will get Red-Dead syndrome and people will just attack people because they are flagged as a villain or hero. I think encounters should be more organic and filled with discovery.

 

@Umbrae, in a game based upon the Virtues, where your interactions with NPCs affect how other NPCs react to you (remember the ring from the demo?), how can your actions not affect you? In a game that has magic, how is it unrealistic to think that people would not be able to judge you, perhaps by your 'aura', or something like that?

I don't think that is in the cards for the game that Richard Garriott has described so far. Your actions should have an effect on you and on your fate, for good or for bad.

 

You have to realize that any flagging system is highly asymmetric in favor of the criminal.

They freely ignore the strong (don't flag) and attack when they have an advantage.
They can freely taunt you into attacking. If you flag, they're not even a criminal. Otherwise you're harassed. If they're clever, they can trick you into going red on them, possibly dying to an NPC.
They can abuse flagging mechanics of AoE or friends helping without flagging or tricking you into flagging.
They simply don't care about getting bad karma. They know how to work it off or safely die it off, giving gear to a friend to hold. If this affects their overall rep in the game, they don't care because they don't play for anything other than PKing you.

 

Knowing how not to be tricked into something evil is just as much part of being good.
You learn their tricks as you go and how to prevent it.
But maybe you do know a few reds in the game just in case.

 

In addressing the OP there are certain problems in an online game in dealing with crime. Incarceration is pretty much not an option. It works in single player only because you can fast forward time until your release but no one wants to sit and wait, watching their character sit in a cell doing nothing. It's the same reason why there's no real sleeping in online games. It's one of those situations where you pretty much have to throw immersion out the window in favor of fun gameplay. This is why games resort to systems like what everyone else is talking about.

Getting caught by guards could be potentially interesting. Bribery or paying fines is a common approach. I shudder to suggest community service quests knowing full well that most criminals will take them and then ignore them.

Ah but now the wheels they are a turning. Let's me contemplate the options here for prisons. Harkening back to Ultima.. the prison Wrong. Now let's say we do have prisons.. escaping would essentially mean avoiding armed guards who will try to kill you on sight.. while not having your equipment.

If you escape.. you're still a wanted criminal.. perhaps even more so.. if you don't.. well you're dead. Traditional penalty paid and of course you've lost everything you had on you when you got caught.

Now the trouble is what happens when you want to serve your time.. that's the real problem. Solution? A specially designed dungeon for hard labor? Now this is where things could get a bit more interesting. Perhaps there's a rare mineral down there and there's a way to smuggle it out to your buddies?

You gain experience while working towards mining/harvesting skills or perhaps you choose to smelt ore so you get skill for production.. are you a smith? You could be forced to produce arms and armor for the local guards.

Maybe there's even a dangerous area where creatures have broken in and you can volunteer to help clean them out to reduce your sentence?

The point being that you're NOT just sitting in your cell for X number of game days staring at all but you can actually be productive and have an interesting experience you can't have anywhere else.

I would also suggest some method of smuggling contraband in and out of these areas.

 

@PrimeRib "You have to realize that any flagging system is highly asymmetric in favor of the criminal."

Which is why for PKs, there has to be a persistent flag that cannot be removed. If that is the case, then the objections you list go away.

 

I very much like the notion of redemption, for both reds and grays, though I think it would be interesting if it required more than merely waiting a specific amount of time until the flag expires, esp. with the richness that a virtue system adds. Perhaps redemption could include, in addition to a stringent time requirement, the active pursuit of redemption through performing various good deeds. During this interim, any criminal action would negate any progress made. Additionally, it might be interesting if reformed criminals more easily fell from grace by performing criminal acts in the future, thus requiring less criminal acts to become semi-perma-red or semi-perma-gray.

 

One way I might forgive a PK is to have him return the items he stole from me.

But then we would have to be able to mark some items we don't want stolen.
Maybe someone could come up with a system for that.

Like I said on the Bounty Hunter system, having a bounty hunter find the PK and getting the item back to the owner would take money from the criminals bank to pay the bounty. But if the PK or Thief returned the item then maybe they are forgiven some points.

 

@Owain

No. It's the opposite. This is like bringing your credit rating down to zero and having no bankruptcy or the "3 strikes your out" laws we have for criminals (in CA). If you have no path to rehabilitation then the PK doesn't care <i>at all</i> about further damaging reputation. And the system becomes even more asymmetric. At this point they're using unflagged characters to scout and spy for them. They will exclusively play stealth classes or something than can escape or again, something where death doesn't hurt them at all.

 

@PrimeRib, what makes you think there will be no path for rehabilitation? With Garriott and Tracy Hickman working the story line, I would thing there would have to be a path for rehabilitation.

As far as stealth classes go, there are also skills to penetrate stealth. Most players don't devote points to those skills, but Anti-PKs do. For those who don't care about their reputation, then the KGB will do what what we did on Siege Perilous. Kill them until they do care, and many cared very much about that. Won't cure it, but there is no cure for the evil that men do. There is only vigilance.

The effectiveness of this approach will be determined during the Alpha/Beta tests. Until then, the sky is neither falling, nor is the problem under complete control. Balancing will be required, which is why we are here.

 

People wanted realism so why shouldn't you have to play bored inmate if you commit a crime? and make it so you have to make x amount of something really boring so you can't just turn the game on and go to work without doing anything.

 

@Bowen I love that idea, It doesn't let you sit idle, but you're still able to work on your skills and possibly make a profit. Ofcourse the idea needs hatching, but so far it sounds good. Why sit in a prison when you could mine? Or perhaps a sentence would be fighting in the guard against some mic thing; and you're given default guard armor/weps and your items are held until the threat is defeated; like a randomly appearing wolf nest or bandit.

 

Another thought that just occurred.. you could also go for the gladiator pit option where convicts are made to fight and possibly earn an early release by surviving X number of matches.

There could be training areas to prepare for matches that could be either PvP or PvE and of course players could come to watch.

What I'm really interested in here is also the potential to commit crimes within an imperfect and potentially corrupt system.. such as mentioned before with smuggling contraband in and out. I'm even hoping some folks might consider incentives to getting arrested.

There would be 3 ways out of prison. Escape, work, &amp; death. Work being any of the ideas mentioned.. mining or producing through craft or fighting in the arena.. death being killed in the arena or escape attempt.. and of course escape. Work and death reduce your sentence and then you're free. Escape increases your 'debt to society' since that's a crime in itself.

I think this might be a little more interesting than simply getting killed for a crime (also an option to resist arrest or be killed by players) or simply having to wait X amount of time per crime without getting caught.

 

I love it. For stealing bread they'd forget about it in a day; and maybe the vendor would remember you or a "notoriety rating" could occur; which reduced your chances of smooth talking your way out of prison or a good deal. And I like the idea of fighting in arenas; perhaps that could even be taken to a global scale with rankings and a "Champion". As in if you get imprisoned; you fight an actual gladiator; and people could place bets; and if you win against a gladiator (could be a cpu if single player or no players available)and take time of your sentence; and to become a gladiator you just have to beat a gladiator. This is also cool because players could "fix" matches and bet tons of gold; though that would obviously have to be worked out.
Gladitorial arenas could also work like pvp arenas for those who do not want to lose items. The only thing they would lose is an entry fee and a rank.

Bowen; you're a bloody genius. Get B to read this, and make a separate thread on gladiatorial arenas; and link it here, and then send a link from that one to this one; ect. It's its own idea.